


EXPIRED

by Astris_C



Category: Sapphire and Steel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 13:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9073213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astris_C/pseuds/Astris_C
Summary: A silly supermarket idea





	

You will not believe what I saw yesterday.

Yesterday, the whole rack of apples disappeared.

I've been a grocer for twenty years now, and I have seen a fair number of strange happenings in my store, from dramatic food fights between customers to big fat rats crawling out of the cashier counter. But believe me, never anything like this.

Once I discovered that all the apples on the rack had disappeared after I had just gotten a fresh supply thirty minutes ago, I went to ask the trainee cashier, Bobby, about it.

But standing there at the counter was not young Bobby, but a fancy-dressed couple who looked like they had just been to a wedding, or had just had one. The man looked too old for that, though. They were busy touching everything, everything that didn't happen to be theirs, but mine. Of course, the first thing I was going to to do is chew them out before they could steal any money. I stomped over to them and opened my mouth to yell, but the man touched my shoulder and paralysed me with a look.

The two proceeded towards the empty apple rack, while I couldn't move. The woman started playing with the other fruits, while the man muttered something along the line of "Time is cracking up again". That was followed by a staring contest that lasted twenty seconds. I actually counted, okay, a full twenty seconds. Finally the man broke eye contact, and began to rummage through the shelf opposite the apple rack, throwing out packets of wholemeal bread. Was there anyone else watching this? Was I the only person standing there feeling like a fool, while those people were behaving even more foolishly yet looking very sure of themselves?

Together they scrutinized the loaves of bread, as if there was some incredibly important message concealed in the packaging, the meaning of life, perhaps. Then without any warning, the man suddenly exploded, "It's expired!" and glared at the bread like how you would a cockroach . The woman tried to soothe him, and cast a quick but worried glance at me.

The man came over to me, showed me the food label of the loaf of bread that said, "Use by 25 April", and started giving me a three minute long lecture on the dangers of keeping expired food in the grocery store. Very strangely, the consequences he mentioned were unrelated to my incompetence as a grocer, or pest problems, or food poisoning, but about how I had just caused havoc in high places of the time continuum, and how my "pathetic species" would never learn to stop "mixing the old and the new".

The woman released me from the paralysis, then they told me to close the store for the day and leave them inside to deal with the potentially critical situation, or my life would end the same way as trainee cashier Bobby's. What choice did I have? I did so and went home. I wish I had called the police or something, but why bother, when those people didn't even look like they were afraid of death, or whatever danger that was happening inside?

When I came back to my store the next morning, everyone was talking about the disappearance of Bobby, but my business was back to normal, those two weirdos gone without a trace, and the apples back on the rack.


End file.
